First, Jobs gives the boot (er, New Balance) to PowerPC chips and snuggles up to Intel, citing disappointment with IBM's progress on microprocessor's technology. Now, adding a bit more insult to injury, the Cupertino company is about to surpass Big Blue in market capitalization -- a fancy term used by fancy people to describe the total dollar market value of all of a given company's outstanding shares.
According to Georges Yared of Yared Investment Research, in only a few months Jobs & Co. will be looking back and smiling at IBM's quaint $158 billion in market worth, probably while sitting in a mahogany chair much like the one Yared (pictured right) prefers. There may or may not be a granite fireplace in the background.
"Currently, Apple is at a market capitalization of $140 billion…" Yared says in recent post on seekingalpha.com. "Apple will surpass IBM before the first quarter of 2008 is in the books, if not sooner."
What makes him so sure? For one thing, the Leopard launch is only weeks away, a fact which he says will compel analysts to raise their Apple stock target prices to $200 a share. Furthermore, those strong Mac, iPod and iPhone sales will likely continue for the foreseeable future.
"The iPod is still a phenomenon and is not, according to many Apple insiders, cannabilizing the iPhone," Yared writes.
Similar sentiments seem to be coming from other analysts as well, all of whom use words and phrases like "firing on all cylinders" and "outperform" in their investor notes to clients. So while the company has a slight PR mess to clean up, financially it would seem Apple can do no wrong at the moment.
Photo: Yared Investment Research
